Mountain Man Read Online Free PDF Page A

for a minute, and she swallowed hard, sure that he was going to give her some sarcastic financial rundown and chide her for asking. But, surprisingly, he didn’t. He just nodded. “That was the way my father wanted it. He knew I’d hold it as long as I lived, no matter what. You’ll find that Gerald isn’t terribly sentimental. He’d just as soon have a photograph as the object itself.”
    She pursed her full lips and studied him. “I’ll bet you saved bobby pins and bits of ribbon when you were a teenager,” she said daringly, just to see what he’d say.
    He blinked, then laughed, but it wasn’t a pleasant sound. “I had my weak moments when I was younger,” he agreed. His eyes darkened. “Not anymore, though, Kentucky girl. I’m steel right through.”
    She wouldn’t have touched that line. She turned, glancing at the distant ribbon the river made running into those towering, majestic peaks. “I was thinking about Lewis and Clark,” she murmured, glancing toward the horizon, so that she didn’t catch the look on his face. “A man died during the expedition. What they described sounded just like food poisoning. They wouldn’t have known, of course. How much we’ve learned in over a hundredyears. How far we’ve come. And yet,” she said softly, “how much we’ve lost in the process.”
    “The expedition went down the Missouri and Jefferson rivers,” he said slowly. “We’re on a tributary of the Jefferson, so they may have camped in this valley.” He looked away. “They used to call it Buffalo Flats. The buffalo are gone, though. Like the way of life that existed here long ago.” He shifted restlessly. “Where’s Gerald?”
    “Back at the house, I suppose,” she said, bothered by the curtness of his tone. “He said he had some important phone calls to make. I would have stayed, but he said we wouldn’t work today.”
    “Want a ride back?” he offered, and then seemed to withdraw, as if he regretted the words even as he was speaking them.
    Some devilish imp made her smile at him. “Suppose I say yes?” she asked, driven to taunt him. “You look as if you’d rather sacrifice the horse than let me on him.” And she grinned, daring him to mock her.
    He felt a burst of light, but he wouldn’t give in to it. “Damn you.”
    She grinned even more. “I won’t accept, if you’d rather not let me aboard. Anyway—” she shuddered with deliberate mockery and more sarcasm than he could know, because she’d practically grown up on horses “—I’d probably fall off. It looks very high.”
    “It is. But I won’t let you fall off. Come on.” He kicked his foot out of the stirrup and held down along arm, giving in to an impulse he didn’t even understand. He wanted her closer. He wanted to hold her. That should have warned him, but it didn’t.
    He had enormous feet, she noticed, as she put a foot in the stirrup and let him pull her up in front of him. He was amazingly strong, too.
    She hadn’t realized how intimate it was going to be. His hard arm went around her middle and pulled her back against a body that was warm and strong and smelled of leather and spice. She felt her heart run away, and that arm under her breast would feel it, she knew.
    “Nervous?” he asked at her ear, and laughed softly, without any real humor. “I’m not dangerous. I don’t like women, or haven’t they filled you in yet?”
She’s a woman
, he was reminding himself.
Watch it, watch yourself
—
she’ll sucker you in and kick you down, just like the other one did.
    “Yes, I’m nervous,” she said. “Yes, you’re dangerous, and you may not like women, but I’ll bet they chase you like a walking mink.”
    His eyebrows arched. “You’re plainspoken, aren’t you?” he asked, gathering her even closer as he urged the restless stallion into motion, controlling him carefully with lean, powerful hands and legs.
    “I try to be,” she said, still uneasy about the double life she’d led since